POETRY

Daffodils Before Spring

By Matthew Wimberley     Auburn Witness Poetry Prize 2019 Honorable Mention
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I know the hills
must change.
I know this
because I have seen
three decades
of diminishment–
the pines
and beeches
replaced–
the way made
for another bank,
a chain restaurant,
a golf-course clubhouse
where I can hear
the scrubbing
of silver being polished
early in the morning.
Even the old hotel,
the graying boards
and sloped deck,
the family name
on the hand-carved sign,
burned and rebuilt,
a little cul-de-sac
styled in the name of comfort,
and the Holy
Dollar by the Committee
of False Promises.
Stepping through
the brown mosses
and the first small blossoms
wreathing the wash
I watch
daylight rise
over the mountains
and float
down the surface
of a creek
into a labyrinth
of rhododendron.
Because
there has to be
some drama
to “hook the reader”
so to speak, the sky
is wearing
the bloodstained
uniform of rebellion.
It is March. Almost
by surprise
daffodils appear,
decorated
in the yellow
flags of their
one, simple
and useless triumph.
They spread out
resembling
the encampments
of exiles
who look
like they are waiting
to go nowhere. And,
don’t they make
the dead weeds
bearable
after months
of freezing rain
and wind? They
grow down the ditches
into Spruce Pine
and Sugargrove,
and in the pastures
where the newborn
cows have yet
to graze them, sleeping
beside their mothers
while their breathing
enlarges the cold.
They sprout
at the turn offs
to gravel roads,
and at the edge
of the closed down
Texaco station
still advertising
$1.15 a gallon
and discount
tobacco. And yesterday,
walking by
the cemetery
at the Baptist Church
I admired the flowers
gathered
in one corner
collecting
in the light
as if waiting
to be placed
in memory
of the nameless
dead. For two weeks
they blossomed–the first
bright things
I didn’t imagine
from the dark
earth. I think
I must have
witnessed
them so many times
only now
I see them
there in plain
sight, out
in a land
I’ve known
most of my life.
See how those
over there
bend
lissome
in the wind
and complete
the field? And
how even
the memory of them
is fragrant
and sweet.


MATTHEW WIMBERLEY is the author of two collections of poetry, All the Great Territories (SIU, 2020) and Daniel Boone’s Window (LSU, 2021). His work has appeared most recently as part of the Poem-A-Day series from the Academy of American Poets. Wimberley lives on Beech Mountain, NC and is an assistant professor of English at Lees-McRae College.


VOLUME 52.3